State by State Data

2015

From a financial aid perspective, California Governor Brown’s revised budget released earlier today looks a lot like his January proposal. That’s a shame, because it provides no new funding for state financial aid programs beyond an expected increase to the Middle Class Scholarship. While we are disappointed that need-based financial aid wasn’t prioritized, we appreciate that the budget formalizes a much needed albeit modest $1.9 million increase to raise low-income students’ grants for non-tuition costs (from $1,648 to $1,656), driven by legislation championed last year by Senator Kevin de León.

In spite of a growing economy, college affordability remains a substantial challenge for Californians, particularly the state’s lowest-income students. The majority of college students in the state – and the vast majority of those with low incomes – attend community college, where tuition and fees are low but total costs are quite high. Factoring in textbooks, transportation, and living expenses, total costs for community college students can exceed $18,000. But low-income students at community colleges get much less in grant aid than students elsewhere, leaving them with more costs to cover out of pocket.

As we have documented, even amongst students at the same type of college, college costs are most burdensome for the lowest income students. For instance, even after accounting for existing grant aid, college costs eat up far greater shares of family income for low-income students than for higher income students at both the California State University and the University of California. Is it then a surprise that low-income students are more likely to graduate with debt than their higher income peers?

For students with limited resources, need-based financial aid can mean the difference between a high school diploma and a college credential. While the $1.8 billion Cal Grant program has done much to bring college within reach for many Californians, there’s clearly room for improvement. Because there aren’t nearly enough grants to go around, a growing number of eligible students are being turned away from the program – most of whom are living in poverty. Meanwhile, the grants for the lowest income students in particular hold just a fraction of their original purchasing power.

That’s why our Cal Grant recommendations – along with those of more than a dozen other groups representing students, civil rights, and business – have focused on increasing the number of competitive Cal Grants available, so eligible applicants have a fighting chance of getting a grant; and strengthening the Cal Grant B access award, which helps the lowest income students pay for non-tuition costs.

California cannot get ahead by leaving a growing number of low-income students behind. We look forward to working with the Governor and Legislature to shape a 2015-16 budget that begins to right these inequities.

Yesterday, Corinthian Colleges abruptly closed its remaining 30 campuses in California, Arizona, Hawaii, New York, and Oregon, where 16,000 students were enrolled. While nothing can give these students back the time they spent at Corinthian, they deserve a fresh start.

The good news is that the Higher Education Act (HEA) provides for the discharge of students’ federal loans if a school closes before students finish their programs. In fact, the HEA says “the Secretary shall discharge” students’ loans, and the Education Department’s regulations specify that the Secretary will mail each borrower a discharge application and an explanation of the qualifications and procedures for obtaining a discharge.

The bad news is that the HEA does nothing similar to restore students’ eligibility for Pell Grants, which needy students can receive for no more than six academic years. Because the law doesn’t reset the clock on a student’s eligibility for Pell Grants when a school shuts down, low-income students may not be eligible for enough aid to complete a program anywhere else.

For example, the students enrolled in the pharmacy technician certificate program at Corinthian’s Everest College in West Los Angeles – which cost more than $11,000, and had a 25% job placement rate and a 35% student loan default rate – will be able to get their federal loans discharged, but they won’t get their Pell Grant eligibility restored to what it was before they enrolled at Everest. As a result, they may not have enough Pell Grant eligibility left to complete the much lower cost pharmacy tech program at the nearby community college.

For the more than 12,000 Pell Grant recipients estimated to be enrolled at the Corinthian campuses that suddenly closed yesterday, this is an oversight needing swift correction.

How did Pell Grants get left out of the closed-school provisions? Prior to 2008, students could receive Pell Grants for as long as they were making satisfactory academic progress towards a degree or certificate. So if a school closed before a student could finish, the student didn’t need to worry about their Pell Grant eligibility running out.

However, in 2008 Congress limited future Pell Grant eligibility to nine years. Then, in 2011 Congress lowered this lifetime limit to six years and applied the new limit immediately and retroactively to all students, including those just a semester away from completing their degrees.

Unfortunately, Congress didn’t amend the HEA to restore students’ eligibility for Pell Grants when a school closes before they can finish. This was likely an oversight, not a conscious policy decision. As a result, the lowest income students at Corinthian campuses may not have enough Pell Grant eligibility left to complete a program at another school.

It’s time to fix this harmful omission. In the last Congress, Representative Janice Hahn introduced the Protecting Students from Failing Institutions Act (HR 4860) to restore Pell Grant eligibility for students at campuses that close. We recommend going a step further: Pell Grant eligibility should be restored for any student who has their federal student loans discharged, either because their school closed or because of school fraud. Current and former Corinthian students deserve a true fresh start and the chance to get a meaningful degree or certificate at another school.

While the President’s proposed budget fully funds the scheduled increases in the maximum Pell Grant and continues to tie it to inflation after 2017, the FY16 House and Senate budget proposals freeze the maximum Pell Grant for 10 years. As recently as the mid 1980s, the maximum Pell Grant covered more than half of the average annual cost of attending a four-year public college. Freezing the maximum grant for the next 10 years would reduce the share of covered costs from an already record low of 29 percent in 2015-16 to just 20 percent by 2025-26, making college even less affordable.

Sources: Calculations by TICAS on data from the College Board, 2014,Trends in College Pricing 2014, Table 2, http://bit.ly/1F9qoJv; and U.S. Department of Education data on the maximum Pell Grant. The maximum Pell Grant for 2015-16 was announced in the Department of Education’s Pell Grant Payment and Disbursement Schedules,http://ifap.ed.gov/dpcletters/GEN1502.html. College costs are defined here as average total in-state tuition, fees, and room and board costs at public four-year colleges. Projected college costs for future years were estimated by using the average annual increase in costs over the most recent five years.

Last year’s House Budget Resolution proposed charging students with financial need interest on their subsidized loans while they are still in school and using that money to reduce the deficit. In other words, the House Budget proposed increasing student debt to reduce government debt. Unfortunately, many expect that next week’s House and Senate Budget Resolutions will propose this change again, despite growing public concern about rising student debt and broad consensus on the importance of higher education and postsecondary training to the US economy.

Currently, undergraduates with financial need are eligible for subsidized Stafford loans, which do not accrue interest while students are enrolled at least half time or during the first six months after students leave school (the “grace period”). Eliminating this in-school and grace period subsidy (i.e., charging interest during these periods) would increase the cost of college by thousands of dollars for undergraduate students with financial need.

The charts below illustrate how much more a student would have to pay if the in-school and grace period interest subsidy were eliminated, assuming the student starts school in 2015-16, borrows the maximum subsidized student loan amount ($23,000), and graduates in five years.

Using current CBO interest rate projections, eliminating the in-school and grace period interest subsidy on subsidized Stafford loans would cause this student to enter repayment with $3,750 in additional debt due to accrued interest charges. As a result, she would end up repaying $4,900 (16%) more over 10 years and $6,900 (16%) more if she repaid over 25 years.

The added costs to students will be even higher when interest rates in the economy rise from their current levels, which are still historically low. If the undergraduate Stafford loan interest rate hits the statutory cap of 8.25%, eliminating the in-school and grace period interest subsidy on subsidized Stafford loans would cause this student to enter repayment with $5,700 in additional debt due to accrued interest charges. As a result, she would end up repaying $8,350 (25%) more over 10 years and $13,450 (25%) more if she repaid over 25 years.

At a time when higher education has never been more important or more difficult to afford, we should not be trying to balance the budget on the backs of students. We need to be doing more, not less, to keep college within reach for all Americans.

Note: More than four in five (82%) undergraduates with subsidized loans also have unsubsidized loans. If this student borrowed unsubsidized loans in addition to her subsidized loans and entered repayment with more than $30,000 in debt, she would qualify for a 25-year repayment plan

Earlier today, California Governor Jerry Brown released his proposed budget for the 2015-16 fiscal year, and it includes some much-needed resources for higher education. For the state’s public universities it provides new funding, contingent upon UC and CSU keeping tuition flat, and it supplies community colleges with more funding, including $200 million to invest in student success. Within financial aid programs, the budget plan includes a boost to the Middle Class Scholarship program. Adding the Governor’s proposal to the State Senate Democrats’ and the State Assembly Speaker’s plans, it is certain that 2015 is going to be an important year for higher education. It is now clear that college affordability is a universal priority, and that the Governor, Assembly, and Senate all want to do more to help low-income students pay for college. That is great news. What is also clear is that those parties disagree on the best way to do this. Here is what we at TICAS see as the top two priorities for new financial aid investments:

1. Help more eligible students get Cal Grant awards. Less than one quarter of the lowest income students in California who apply for federal aid receive a Cal Grant. For students who don’t apply within a year of graduating high school, there are only 22,500 grants available, and there are hundreds of thousands of eligible applicants. This means that the odds of an eligible applicant getting a Cal Grant are lower than the odds of getting into an Ivy League school. The students turned away empty handed have an average family income less than $21,000 and a family size of three.

2. Increase the size of the Cal Grant B access award. Total college costs go beyond tuition and fees – textbooks, food, housing, and transportation are all necessary to be a successful student. The Cal Grant B access award provides needy students – many with family incomes several thousand dollars below the poverty level – with resources to pay for these crucial college costs. While important progress was made in 2014, the award still lags far behind where it should be. Adjusted for inflation, the original access award would today have a value of over $6,000, almost four times today’s maximum award of $1,648.

College isn’t easily affordable these days for many families, but for some, costs are an insurmountable barrier to getting to college and graduating. Researchshows that college costs comprise the largest share of family income for the lowest income students, and low-income students are much more likely to graduate with debt than their higher income peers. Need-based financial aid – like the Cal Grant program – can help to bring higher education within reach for these families. Yet hundreds of thousands of the students least able to afford college do not receive state grants simply because there are not enough. And the stagnation of Cal Grant B access awards means that on average the lowest income Cal Grant recipients receive smaller grants than higher income recipients. These are critically important points that must remain front and center as the debate around higher education investments evolves. We look forward to working with the Governor and Legislature to shape a 2015-16 budget that strengthens college affordability for the students who need the help most. - Debbie Cochrane and Laura Szabo-Kubitz

Update: Details of the White House plan are becoming available and make clear it differs significantly from the Tennessee Promise and other “free community college” plans. In particular, the White House proposal is not a “last-dollar” scholarship. Instead, it provides additional federal funding to states that make key reforms, including not charging tuition or fees at community colleges. It is aimed squarely at stopping state disinvestment in public colleges, which is crucial to making college more affordable. Also, unlike the Tennessee Promise, low-income students could benefit. These are clear improvements on the plans discussed in our blog posted earlier today. Still, making tuition free for all students regardless of their income is a missed opportunity to focus resources on the students who need aid the most. Consider California community colleges, with the lowest tuition in the nation and waivers for low-income students. The result? Federal student aid application rates, even among low-income students, have been notoriously low, and part-time enrollment rates sky-high. "Free tuition" is not a panacea.

Many are predictingthat President Obama tomorrow will endorse Tennessee’s "free community college" plan. While the Tennessee Promise is well intentioned and more students than anticipated applied for it, many highereducationexperts have rightly criticized it and other "free community college" plans.

One of the major problems with the Tennessee plan (and others) is that the "promise" isn't actually much of a promise at all. That’s because the "free" moniker only relates to tuition charges – charges which comprise just one-fifth of the actual costs of going to community college. The other costs of college, including textbooks, transportation, and living expenses, are far more substantial – and far more likely to prove a barrier to student success. Yet they’re left out of the deal.

Further, the Tennessee plan (and others like it) is a "last-dollar" scholarship, meaning that it only helps students who don’t get enough from other grants to cover tuition. This is a critically important point because, given the relatively low income of community college students and the relatively low tuition charges at community colleges, it means that the students with the greatest need for financial aid will rarely benefit. Conversely, those with the least need are the most certain to benefit.

Free tuition plans are giant missed opportunities because they put resources where they are less needed when the need is so great in other areas. As shown in the table below, students in the lower income categories need far more financial support to bring college within reach. The vast majority of them (92% for the lowest income group) have "unmet need" even after accounting for available grants and what they can afford out-of-pocket. That’s true of just 9% of students in the highest income category: 91% of those students can already afford not just tuition, but their entire cost of attendance. Surely higher income students would appreciate additional resources, but do they need them? Not according to federal needs analysis, and the vast majority of these higher income students already enroll in college and are the most likely to graduate.

In addition to providing resources where they are not needed or needed less, these free-tuition plans are also ticking time-bombs. They signal that tuition is all that matters and flat-out ignore the other costs of attendance that determine whether students can get to campus, whether they’re focused on the material or how to pay for their next meal while in class, and whether they have a place to sleep at night.

Currently, many community college students get help paying for these other costs in addition to tuition. As shown above, the lowest income students’ average grant aid exceeds the amount of the tuition they’re charged by quite a bit: their total grant aid comes to about three times (328%) their tuition charge. On average, students with incomes below the median get grants that cover full tuition, with some resources left to help pay non-tuition costs, including fees, books, transportation, food and housing; students with incomes above the median get grants that cover, on average, about one-third of tuition.

If we prioritize covering tuition costs, treating the other costs of attendance as less important, how long until the grants for lower income students – grants which currently exceed tuition – are cut? This isn't a fantastical possibility. Limiting certain students’ Pell eligibility to tuition costs was an idea included in a federal appropriations bill not too long ago.

If resources were unlimited, there would be more merit to free tuition arguments. But resources are in fact so limited that the vast majority of low-income students – the students for whom financial aid will make the difference – aren't getting what they need. Free tuition proposals are politically popular, but regressive and inefficient. They are a lot like higher education tax benefits, where there is broad and bipartisan agreement that much better targeting is needed.

Free tuition proposals don’t just fail to move us forward: they’re a step in the wrong direction. We should absolutely do more to encourage students to pursue higher education and make them aware of financial aid, but this is not the way to do it.